Hello open-hearted donors,
On April 5th, I plan to donate $1.
But I haven’t decided which charity.
So I would learn from listening to you.
I have two questions:
1. On average, do you know a charity that would use $1 to extend an infant’s life by one day?
2. Do you know the evidence for that estimated day of life?
To visualize a worthwhile result, I picked $1 USD and one day for an infant.
Hey, glad you’re interested in donating!
The Against Malaria Foundation distributes bednets to protect people from being bitten by mosquitos that carry malaria, a deadly disease that kills hundreds of thousands of people each year. GiveWell provides a cost-effectiveness analysis based on their extensive research on the charity and, while they strongly caution against taking these estimates as fact, their estimate is that $1 will extend an infant’s life by at least two days. (Calculation: 60 years of additional life * 365 days / $9,064 maximum cost per life saved from Cell H223 = 2.41 minimum estimate of days of life per dollar).
Other GiveWell-recommended alternatives for saving lives would be the Malaria Consortium or New Incentives. Hellen Keller International fights childhood blindness with vitamin A supplementation, and several deworming charities promote education and economic development by treating diseases which keep children out of school. You can also give the money to GiveWell’s Maximum Impact Fund, and they will regrant 100% of the funds to these and other top-rated charities when they need it most.
Of course, there are many other options if you’re interested in helping animals, helping people flourish in the future, or doing other kinds of good in the world, but it sounds like you’d like to focus this donation on an immediate impact of saving people’s lives. Wishing you the best of luck exploring your many opportunities for impact, on April 5th and long after!
Aogara,
What a perfect reply! This thoughtful estimate of Against Malaria Foundation expected benefit thoroughly informed me. The similar expectations from Malaria Consortium, New Incentives, Helen Keller International, and GiveWell’s Maximum Impact Fund have sound evidence to extend the healthy life of an infant, on average, by about one day for one dollar.
What’s the point of extending an infant’s life by a single day? If the infant in question has some sort of terminal illness that will inevitably cause them to die in infancy, prolonging their life by a single day seems extremely cruel. It would do nothing but prolong the infant’s suffering.
Mark, you’re right, I had no intention if prolonging a miserable life. I intended to ask about extending an infant’s healthy and pleasant life by one day.